Rock Bottom

‘When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on’  ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Once the rain came it increased handballs, limited marks, and crushed most of our key position players’ ability to score. Combine that with the likes of Shaun Higgins, Travis Boak, Heath Grundy, Chris Yarran and Dustin Fletcher on unscheduled byes, and we had to deal with our other premium players like Paul Chapman, Lance Franklin, Jimmy Bartel, Joel Selwood, Matthew Pavlich, David Mundy and Aaron Sandilands  – just to name a few – taking their bye. So we turned to our carefully selected bench players to support us as best they could and, in some cases like mine, traded to avoid taking donuts.

The last thing I will do is pick on the young players – as we know, they can be wildly inconsistent – but when it comes to the remaining premium players in our teams, we expect them to shoulder the load and lead the way… but hardly anyone stood up. Adam Goodes, Bryce Gibbs, Brian Lake, Alan Didak, Andrew Swallow, Leigh Montagna and Brendan Goddard were all well below their best and left some of us with the worst score we’ve had since our rookie year; leaving us sullen, downtrodden, stroking our chins and pondering the mysteries of the world.

What can we take away from it? Football can sometimes be unpredictable and no matter how much planning you put into balancing out the bye rounds, elite players are not immune to having a stinker and strange things can happen all in the same weekend of our beloved game.

‘Rock bottom is good solid ground, and a dead end street is just a place to turn around’  ~Buddy Buie and J.R. Cobb

If there is a positive to take out of this weekend, it would be for those of us who don’t have some of the above mentioned players. We can see some potential bargain buys on premiums falling in price around the time our first crop of cash cows peak in value. If you have some loose change it could potentially allow you a straight swap, so grab your wishlist, get your calculator and start crunching those numbers on breakevens. Christmas is coming early this year and this is a round that will help define your team over the coming weeks and set you up for the rest of the season.